Home › The Principles of Cookery › JUNKET (another way)
JUNKET (another way)
Warm three pints of new milk, add twelve lumps of sugar, pour into a glass dish, and add a wine-glassful of brandy. Stir in two small table-spoonfuls of essence of rennet, cover with a clean cloth, and leave it some hours to set. Clotted cream may be put on the top before serving. The brandy may be omitted if desired.
Junket is a set custard with no eggs and no cooking: rennet enzyme coagulates warm milk into a soft curd. Everything depends on temperature and stillness.
- The hinge: blood heat, then do not move itRennet works best at around 98F to 105F. Milk heated much hotter (roughly 140F and above) destroys the enzyme and will not set; much below body temperature it sets slowly or not at all. Once the rennet is stirred in, the dish must be left absolutely undisturbed, or the curd breaks and weeps whey.
- "New milk"Fresh whole milk, in this period usually raw and still warm from the cow. Use pasteurised whole milk; UHT and ultra-pasteurised milk will not set reliably, because the heat treatment interferes with rennet coagulation, and skimmed milk gives a weak, watery curd.
- Three pintsCassell's pints are Imperial, 20 fl oz each, so three pints is 60 fl oz, about 7.2 US cups or 1.7 litres. Scale the rennet with the milk rather than the other way round.
- Twelve lumps of sugarLump sugar of the period was cut to no fixed size, but a lump of roughly a teaspoon gives about 4 tablespoons, or 50 g. Dissolve it in the warm milk before the rennet goes in.
- Essence of rennetA liquid rennet extract sold by chemists. Modern liquid rennet, animal or microbial, is likely to be more concentrated than Victorian essence, so follow the strength on the bottle rather than the two small tablespoonfuls given here; if using junket tablets, follow the dose on the packet.
- "Some hours to set"Properly warmed milk sets in 10 to 30 minutes; the long standing time here is generous. Let it set on the counter, then refrigerate and serve cold.
- The brandyA wine-glassful is about 2 fl oz. Alcohol added in quantity can slow or prevent coagulation, so stir it into the warm milk first, gently, and check that the mixture is still at blood heat before adding the rennet.
- Yield and servingSix to eight servings from the full quantity. Clotted cream on top is traditional; grated nutmeg is a common alternative.
Junket is among the oldest sweet dishes in English cookery, descended from medieval curd dishes, and the name is generally traced to the Old French jonquette, a little rush basket used to drain curds. By the late nineteenth century it had become nursery and invalid food, valued precisely because it is milk made digestible without heat: it demonstrates rennet coagulation, the same reaction that begins every cheese. The brandy is optional here, and the recipe says so.